It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
I recently came across a striking passage in Samuel Pepy's diary in which he receives advice on how to get his wife Elizabeth pregnant. At the time of writing, July 1664, he and Elizabeth had been married for eight years, but they remained childless. While attending a dinner on 26th July, Samuel asked the women …
The 19th century witnessed the rise of the celebrity musician. Previously, musicians were wholly dependent on aristocratic or ecclesiastical patrons, and their output was determined by the wishes of these sometimes despotic individuals. Bach, for instance, was a mere Kapellmeister, and Haydn was not much more than a court servant. Even Mozart was unhappily dependent …
Continue reading ‘Lisztomania’: Franz Liszt, sex, and celebrity
A taste for salacious gossip is nothing new. It's a stereotype, but true, that Georgian London was a bawdy place and had no shortage of scandal to go round. The spreading of scandalous stories was helped by the 18th century explosion in the newspaper trade. In 1770, London had 5 daily papers; by the 1780s …
Continue reading Sex, the law and the press in Georgian London